Chch severance pay dispute over

Press, 4 March 1982, Page 2

Chch severance pay dispute over

'Adispute at the Christchurch engineering firm of Andrews and Beaven, Ltd, was settled yesterday.

The dispute was over the amount of severance pay a female clerical worker'in her 50s was entitled to. She had worked for the company for 12 years but was made redundant last Friday. The Canterbury Clerical Workers’ Union at first sought a month’s postpone-

ment of the notice of redundancy and tried to get the company to find other work for her, but when this was rejected, sought severance pay according to an agreement reached by the company last year with Auckland unions.

It is believed that part of the settlement yesterday was that the woman should receive severance pay according to the Auckland agreement scale. Under that agreement the woman would get 28 weeks pay, which was nearly twice what the company had offered. Clerical and other staff began striking in support of the woman on February 23 ■and by Tuesday this week about 200 workers were on strike. They met at the trade union centre yesterday morn-

ing and agreed to return to work after the meeting to allow talks to proceed. The settlement was reached yesterday afternoon. The company’s personnel manager, Mr V. M. Busby, said that the settlement was influenced by the recent substantial extension of the company’s activities into the Auckland area, after the acquisition of parts of the Motor Traders, Ltd, group last year. The company had viewed the Auckland redundancy settlement involving some former Motor Traders staff as a “one-off” situation when it discontinued some of Motor Traders’ former business. The company had considered it was making the agreement on behalf of Motor Traders and that the settlement was a local one.